Review: Desperados III

An entertaining mix of Wild West vibes and early Metal Gear Solid stealth gameplay.

One of the joys of the videogames world is that if you fix your gaze beyond the triple-A, attention-grabbing, mega-marketed blockbusters, you can unearth plenty of unexpected gems. Desperados III is a case in point: developed by tiny Munich-based indie Minimi Games and published by the small but rapidly growing Austrian concern THQ Nordic, its origins are pretty obscure.

On top of that, a cursory glance at Desperados III’s graphics might lead you to conclude that it is something of a throwback – it adopts a distinctly archaic isometric viewpoint, not unlike one of the early Metal Gear Solid games. Don’t be fooled, though: those less than cutting-edge visuals conceal plenty of sophistication, along with a surprisingly rich and gripping storyline. And yes, its gameplay is reminiscent of early Metal Gear Solid games – which should excite anyone with an enduring love for stealth.

Desperados III kicks off with a backstory-establishing flashback, in which you take control of a teenage version of John Cooper, participating in a stealth mission with his dad. It’s a slightly frustrating experience for him – since his old man won’t let him wield a knife or gun – but less so for you, since it operates as a basic tutorial. Thus you learn how to highlight enemies so you can see their (MGS-alike) visual cones, and to distract them by throwing a coin. You’re also introduced to Desperados III’s support for hidden, emergent behaviour – chuck your coin at a horse just when a guard is walking behind it, for example, and it will kick out, killing him.

Forming a complementary posse

In the first proper mission, you flash forward to a fully adult John Cooper, now adept with both knife and gun. Cooper, you learn, is on a quest to find someone called Frank – somehow involved with the previous, prequel mission. To that end, Cooper is on the train to Flagstone, Colorado, but it is ambushed by a bunch of robbers. Cooper finds his first collaborator, a shady medic called Doc McCoy; the pair team up to take down the baddies and get the train moving once more.

McCoy can chuck his medical bag to distract enemies, heal himself and Cooper and shoot a near-silent sniper-rifle, while Cooper can throw a knife (which must be retrieved once used), shoot a gun and distract with his coin. A key gameplay mechanism entitled Showdown Mode allows the pair to make the most of their combined skills, by suspending the action so that you can plot a set of moves.

As Cooper’s quest progresses, he teams up with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells who coalesce into a proper outlaw posse – the latter stages of Desperados III provide a beautifully observed evocation of the resulting group dynamic. The posse’s members have a deliciously wide array of skills: runaway bride Kate O’Hara can temporarily blind enemies with poison, disguise herself for infiltration purposes and flirt with baddies to provide diversions, and Hector the tank-like hunter has a man-trap and can take out several enemies with a single shotgun blast. He’s also strong enough to carry two bodies at once. Perhaps best of the lot is Isabelle Moreau, a mysterious voodoo practitioner who can control the minds of enemies and set them against each other (albeit at a personal cost).

Desperados III’s gameplay is proper, hardcore stealth: make one transgression, and you will find yourself beset by gun-wielding reinforcements. It pays to save often (although you’re rewarded at the end of each mission for saving as few times as possible) and, as with any stealth game, patience is required. Vast amounts of satisfaction can be found from taking down huge numbers of enemies without arousing suspicion. As well as by discovering little hidden aids, such as vials of poison that can be used to make deaths appear accidental.

A surprisingly rich story

It doesn’t take long for you to get past the dated visuals: two elements help with that process. First, the variety of the missions, which take place across huge swathes of Wild West America and include a murder-mystery in New Orleans, the odd flashback, defending a ranch against massed forces and sneaking away from a shotgun wedding.

Mirroring those settings is a richly observed story, which is sparingly told (mostly via dialogue) but way richer and deeper than you might expect. It really does end up feeling like a Spaghetti Western with an extra buddy element, albeit one viewed from an isometric viewpoint, which is quite an achievement from such a tiny developer.

It may not be the longest of games – there are 16 levels, each of which can be negotiated in roughly 30 minutes, although in practice you invariably take longer if you mess up your timing and one of your characters dies. There is gameplay beyond the storyline, too, in the form of The Baron’s Challenges, which encourage you to revisit missions after setting new constraints and parameters. And there’s plenty of innate replay value, as you get to grips with the characters’ strengths and revisit previous missions determined to complete them much more elegantly this time around.

If you have the requisite patience to take on a properly rigorous stealth game, you should find Desperados III very rewarding: its gameplay is agreeably pure as far as stealthing goes, and is impressively backed up by elements that are better than you might expect from an indie game, namely an inventive and absorbing storyline, great characterisations and lashings of the sort of believable yet entertaining Wild West ambience that rendered Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, such a joy.

If you struggle to locate the patience required to play stealth games, you will probably find Desperados III somewhat frustrating to play, so it isn’t one of those games that will have universal appeal across every gaming tribe. But it has all the makings of a cult hit.